I tell an abbreviated version of the story these days, a half-truth which is less embarrassing to admit to the populace at large, but on this day, I feel I owe the full facts to the faithful readers who know me better and have some insight into the peculiar format which is my life. I take you now to my Hiking and Climbing Journal, edited for brevity and amended to protect the identity of the location, dated 9-14 September 2001. Far from the nearest trail and only just returned from a foray to a nearby peak, I had settled into my isolated camp to spend the remainder of the afternoon.

I had been perched on Toothpaste Hill for half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes, and I was writing, attention fully on the task. That someone could 'sneak up' on me is something which pains me to admit, but I was decidedly startled by a voice which asked cordially, "What are you doing poaching on my territory?"

The visitor was standing beside Knobbly Rock. I laid aside the journal or letter which was in my hands. I managed to say, "Ha! Seems to me you're poaching on mine," more glibly than I felt. The intruder proceeded around Toothpaste Hill's east end, stepped over the guylines of the tent and kinda pulled up short for just a second.

"Do you mind?" the guest asked, with a gesture at Toothpaste Hill's pleasant shade.

"By all means, join me," I said, not feeling a word of it. Might as well fall back on social niceties when all else crumbles.

He shucked his pack and I was too rattled to notice that it was a daypack. Digging down into it, he brought up water and some kind of trail mix and sat there nibbling and chatting about how he'd never seen anybody here in all the time he'd been visiting the place. I repllied, "Me neither, except for a batch who camped up on the ridge once, and I've been here almost every year of the last 25. Missed a couple in there, but not many."

As we chatted about backpacking and camping and I finally realized that his pack was a knapsack and I didn't have to worry about sharing my precious place with an interloper, I felt a bit more cordial and asked, "You wouldn't happen to have a weather report on you, would you?" He replied with the details, but then hesitated before asking how long I'd been encamped. When I told him, he responded by saying, "Well, I have some bad world news." I raised an enquiring eyebrow. "There's been a terrorist attack on New York City. They crashed a hijacked plane into the World Trade Tower and it's collapsed."

I sat there waiting for the punchline with a stupid grin on my face. It smacked of the kind of joke my ex-husband and I would have pulled on somebody who hadn't seen civilization for a few days. "They both collapsed, actually," he went on. "Another plane flew into the second Tower."

"There are two World Trade Towers?" I honestly didn't know that. My visitor affirmed it, and went on talking. "Another place crashed into the Pentagon. There was an attack on Pittsburgh, but that one was shot down. Fighter planes were scrambled over New York and DC."

I still had that stupid grin on. "You're yanking my chain," I said flatly, "and I'm not going for it."

He looked at me poker-faced. "No, I'm not."

"With a straight face, no less!"

"No, I'm not. All the airports are closed."

He's doing this far better than B and I could have managed, I thought. Y'know, I haven't seen any jet contrails. "So when did this purported event occur?"

"Tuesday. Today is Wednesday. Yeah, Tuesday," he repeated, rather uncertainly.

At that point, my leg had gotten quite long enough, thank you, and although I wasn't believing a word of it, I wanted some assurance that it really hadn't happened. "You," I said, "ARE YANKING MY CHAIN!"

The guest never blinked. "I wish I was," he went on, "but it's true." And on he went with details.

I was still wearing that stupid grin. I mean, this was an utterly unthinkable event, something straight out of Hollywood. "Towering Inferno," you know. I made what I thought were polite inquiries regarding rescue efforts and defense strategies, trying hard to dredge up anything I could from my limited mental supply of news and/or political jargon, and even gave the guy a laugh when I explained how out-of-touch I deliberately live. "It was April before I knew who had won the Presidential election, and it was only because my uncle in Minneapolis was complaining about something Bush had done." (That's the truth, too!) No, I was making the requisite comments while trying to find equilibrium between It Happened and It Didn't Happen. I wasn't making much progress.

The whole interchange took maybe 20-30 minutes, and when the interloper stood up and shouldered his pack, I was still unconvinced. I had to entertain the possibility, though. It wasn't going away. I finished with writing a piece on a letter about the encounter, and there was an eerie flavour to the atmosphere that I couldn't quite shake. I tried to lay it on human contact, but that wasn't the whole of it. I felt out-of-body, disjointed, desperately needing grounding in the things that mattered to me. I went for a walk.

I spent the next full day doing the things I love best: bathing in the creek, counting frogs, sitting beneath the trees of Toothpaste Hill, spending precious times with certain significant objects, and walking, walking, walking through September. I kept journal and letter-writing to a minimum, played very little harmonica. I had not one but two baths during the afternoon, however, and a distant encounter with a helicopter. Ah! Things were flying then! Reason to discount that wacky tale of large-scale horror. I put Time on a shelf, and for this day, it barely existed and evening came far too soon.

The following morning, I hiked out, crashed out onto trail, and man! does that inclined trail feel like level ground at first! Passed a couple of sets of hikers between there and a creek crossing, but nobody offered conversation and that was fine with me. Stopped at the creek and there I did encounter a chatty solo lady, and just to let nature take its course, I did not introduce any mention of terrorism into the conversation and neither did she. More people at the overlook. More conversation, no mention of New York. Yep, my leg had been pulled, all right. No mention of aircraft crashing into tall buildings, just cheerful repartee. Not a squeak from any of the various hikers I passed en route to my car. Not a one.

As I threw my pack down at the trailhead, my fishing buddy and his wife pulled up in their car. They caught me up on the family news, asked about my trip...conversation that took us many miles down the road. At that point, my friend asked, "Did you talk to anybody today?"

"Yeah, several people," I said, having a foreboding of what was coming next.

"Did they tell you what happened?"

And Flatland reintroduced itself.

Since that day, I have often said that I had one more day's peace than the rest of the world. In truth, I lived the event as 'old news,' not experiencing the first shock and subsequent terror which those tuned to their televisions were feeling as the events unfolded. As a consequence, I am somewhat less in touch with the significance of this day and how it has affected those around me. Forgive me, my friends, for I know 9/11 reached into your lives so much more deeply than my own.

As I was writing one vignette from my early childhood this morning, I found another which, although rather disastrous at the moment of its occurence, became one of the family favorites to tell. Permit me to dress the stage, the better for the players to move about.

My grandmother's home was large for its day, a great white edifice built on a corner lot, surrounded by shrubbery and flowerbeds. It was a stylish house with a pleasant verandah at the front with pillars and trellises up which various vines climbed. The lawn sloped down gently to sidewalk on two sides, and a small fish pond sat beside the short drive which led to a garage wherein a Pontiac was invariably housed. The longer side of the house shaded flowerbeds where lily-of-the-valley grew thickly, split by a three-step stair and the door into the kitchen, and I often sat on this stoop, revelling in the heady, sweet scent of the lily-of-the-valley (which to this day remains one of the only fragrances I ever wear upon my person). Most of my memories of my grandma's house begin with the opening of the back door.

As you enter, you cast your eyes right to the kitchen sink and a small window above it where lace curtains are tied softly back. The cabinetry is dark with the natural color of the wood and also with its age, cupboards hung on either side of the basin, their doors unadorned but for ornamental pulls. An electric range sits at an L to the sink and cabinets, and adjacent to it is an old-fashioned refrigerator with its round coil sitting like a fez atop its head: "Ice Box Top," a somewhat forbidding presence, but my friend. In the bend of the L is a rectangular table, dark of hue as were most of my grandparents' furnishings, and three or four spindle-backed chairs are arranged around it and the surface has obviously been recently used for kneading bread. There is an open pantry lined with canned goods, a closet beneath unseen stairs, a closed door which keeps the kitchen secret from the living room as was the custom in those times. It is a small and cozy kitchen, primitive by today's standards, but large enough to hold a few precious memories for a four-year old child. Sadly, the old refrigerator has outlasted its usefulness, and thereby depends the substance of this tale.

Yes, my grandmother was a social climber, and nothing would do but what Mrs. R. should be the first in her little town to "out with the old and in with the new." Ice Box Top had been given his death sentence over my laments, and the task of his removal had been assigned to my beloved uncle Gus, then still a teen. Gus, a brilliant boy, knew scads about radio and electricity, but he was about to come up woefully short in the physics of refrigeration.

It happened that menfolk were in short supply that fateful morning, and the old refrigerator was fairly heavy, so after clearing a pathway through the kitchen large enough for my father and Gus to wrestle the body of the machine out through the back door between themselves, Gus set to with a hacksaw, seeing this measure as the simplest and most direct for removing the coil. He knew it was filled with a gas, of course, and his logic was that it would simply dissipate upon access to open air. All well and good in principle, but ah, the fact was to prove differently indeed!

Referring to the encyclopedia, I believe the technical name of the coolant may have been dichlorotetrafluoroethane, a combination of freon-114 and sulfur dioxide. In any event, once the process had been started and the stem of the coil had been pierced by the hacksaw, it was too late to stop. A sulphrous, rotten-egg stench flooded the tiny room and sent all parties but Gus scrambling into the yard. Gus, eyes watering, stuck to his task like a trooper, and when the beast was at last guillotined, my father rushed in to assist in carrying the 'head' into the yard.

It was a sorry morning for that small community when Mrs. R. attempted to move up a rung on the social ladder with her purchase of a new fridge. Whatever the constituents of Ice Box Top's gas may have been, they were detectable in some very few parts per million. As my chum sat on the lawn giving up his life's essence, many of the neighbors in a two-block square area evacuated to a less offensive clime and did not return until late that evening. I rather felt he'd taken appropriate revenge.

Flatlanders labour under an illusion, or at least I did for many years, peering out through my kitchen window (then near sea level) into a thready, penetrating rain which I was certain was only more dense at the base of the state's most notorious weather magnet. I'd cuss the stuff roundly and begin unpacking the daypack I'd only put together the previous night, peeved at the whims of the Weather Gods and their blatant disregard for the many patrols I'd done as a drenched and sodden ranger. Sure, western Washingtonians are used to getting wet, but that doesn't necessarily mean they'd choose to submit themselves to any great length of time in a chilly shower, fully clothed. We do have a few mildew-free brain cells, despite popular opinion, and not all our neurons and synapses have moss growing on their north sides. Yes, faced with the drizzle beyond the streaky glass, I'd unstuff the knapsack, put away the rainwear I'd intended to carry 'just in case' (thinking all the while that by demostrating my devotion to the outdoors, the Weather Gods might choose to favour me with sunshine) and go back to bemoaning my fate for having been born into the Pacific Northwe*t, land of uncountable hiking opportunities and unlimited precipitation.

Ah, but they were having the last laugh, those Weather Gods for often as not, as Flatland is lathered and rinsed in nature's own laundry, the great Mountain looks down upon the sloping washboard of aggregated cumulonimbus as if supervising the task at hand. Today demonstrates the point.

When I rose this morning, the black night sky lay satiny between quilted pads of deep grey, and a few spits of rain had darkened the asphalt beyond the gravel drive. Passing cars threw up no roostertails behind their tires, nor in their headlights was the glint of scattering moisture reflected in the beam, even as a mist. Something vaguely more than dew sparkled in the dry grass, illuminated by the neighbor's mercury vapor light, but the cat's midnight suitor would hardly have wet his belly had he slunk away instead of sprinting off at my reprimand. I saw no sign of anything resembling rain as the sun rose, bringing a brightness to the scene which spoke of clear firmament behind the screen of evergreens, and as I raised my eyes to the Presence in the east, a gown of puffy cotton slipped low and revealed the Mountain's bare and haggard shoulder. Such was the morning near 1500 feet, and a fine autumn day which fairly begged for a short walk.

Meanwhile, down in Flatland...

I could sympathize with my foster sister's plaintive email. Beyond her kitchen window and in the garage, a bicycle was calling for her undivided attention. The Weather Gods were up to their old tricks, and she was going nowhere without water wings. Her subject line read simply, "It's pouring!" Poor, disillusioned child!

I saw the sun rise this morning. I heard coyotes yipping before dawn. There are flowers blooming in my garden, and the leaves are changing color on the trees across the road. My cat is sleeping in the window. Steller's jays and juncos have been dining at the feeders. The sky is blue, and an immense Mountain stands on the eastern horizon.

I am guilty of taking these things for granted.

Today, a friend's son was pronounced free of the cancer which only last week had been believed to be invading his body at a phenomenal rate.

A large miracle returns my eye to the smaller ones for a better appraisal of their worth.

Two days ago, I accomplished something I have been unable to do since my shoulder was injured over a year ago. I performed a single chin-up on the bar which hangs across the bathroom doorway.

Even though my physical therapist had said I'd probably never be able to effect the deed again, I had left the bar there for the eventuality. After all, she had expected only a 60% recovery of my strength and mobility and I had regained a good 90% of range-of-motion with diligent adherence to her exercise schedule. True, there are great areas of ropy atrophy in the bicep of the injured arm and also in the muscles of my back, but 'impossible' is a word I scorn, especially when it applies to something I truly want to achieve. For several weeks, I have been hanging from the bar with elbows bent, simply holding my place for as long as could be endured. I had tried to lift my weight to no avail a few times, so each time I went to the bar, I leapt a little higher, bent my arms a bit more and dangled until my strength failed. Each time, I made an attempt to draw myself up a half inch more, an inch. I got my forehead to the metal one afternoon, failed even that on the following day. But persistence pays. I pulled myself up to lip level a week or so later. It then became clear to me that it could be done, and that was all the encouragement I needed.

When I finally raised my 100 pounds in a full chin-up, I was as proud as if I had taken Olympic gold. To be sure, it ws a slow and pained ascent, and the muscles of my back told the story the following morning. Shoulder tendons crackled afterwards for several hours as they slipped into the correct grooves in the bone, and the muscles of the arm complained a bit, but only due to long disuse. My body graciously accepted the one-day holiday I allowed it, rebuilding muscle fiber to fill in for dead cells. Only tonight, I asked the shoulder to perform again.

Well, the routine was hardly a command performance, but we got there slowly. It wasn't graceful. It wasn't quite a full routine. But who knows? Next, I may be able to swing over the lower bar in the back bedroom doorway, hang by my knees and swing off, skinning the cat.

He did his best to be certain there was no possibility of reproduction, asexual or otherwise. He nuked it in the environmental chamber until he was positive its DNA had been destroyed. "A hundred and thirty-five degrees and five percent humidity ought to do it," he said, but I was careful in my reply not to mention that I really didn't think so. Like the common tick, the stuff is amazingly determined to hold onto life, and I had my fingers crossed. Still, I'd bet he checked for developing seeds because he's very thorough (not a one in evidence). I suppose he might even have suspected me of having the facilities for cloning in my back bedroom for all the precautions he was taking. I know he didn't believe my promises for a minute or else he heard the softly muttered, "...until I leave," at the end of, "I just want it for a houseplant. I swear I won't plant it on the riverbar..." Does Bob not trust me in this matter of a little greenery? Me? The greatest fan of the Vine That Ate The South? I'm hurt, truly I am, wounded to the core!

He was careful in his selection of a three-leafed spray, complete with a full flower spike, and squashed it as flat as possible before tucking it in an envelope (well disguised by thick paper padding and gift wrap) which he hoped would escape the notice of any Agriculture Department official who happened to be lurking nearby. Oh yes! My man is brave in his love for me! After one false start in the hands of a courier, he delivered this parcel to the Post Office in person. Disguised, perhaps? Are those dark glasses in your pocket, Bob? And what's this? A phony moustache and a wig?

Alas, it was thus that Pueraria lobata made its way across 2300 miles in less than viable condition, and Bob foiled my plan to see how long its vine would take to reach the bedroom from the far side of the living room, given appropriate care and feeding. I wanted to watch it chase the cat, but I've been deprived of both opportunities by the heartless cad. I intended to enter a youthful starter in a race with Tetrastigma voinieranum, my mature "Man-Eating Plant" with its growth rate of eight feet per season even though I knew which one would win the prize. I've been outsmarted. My noble vision of something which could heroically conquer the Japanese knotweed (Polyganum cuspidatum) which has invaded the Pacific Northwest has been stymied, and my place in Washington's history denied before submission of the application. Sad, so sad. And me, the Kudzu Queen and all!

As Bob says, "Oy vey!"

From the murk has emerged true treasure: a flower basket quilt handmade by my great-grandmother, in relatively good condition barring a few rust stains on the back and some disintegrated stitchery which can be easily repaired. It is a small piece, not quite twin bed size, done on unbleached cotton in red and an undefinable bluish gold-green which has faded to several different hues along the border stripe. The quilting is meticulous, as was all of Old-old's work, as finely spaced as any done today on a machine. She was a needleworker of great skill, this woman who I barely remember as a feeble, tiny creature with a disposition as sharp as her needles, who undoubtedly contributed to the genetics which incline me toward the finer needlearts.

Although I have another of her quilts (a double wedding ring), I lamented letting a second discovery go at far too cheap a price as I knew I needed to do if it was to find a new home. It was a simple thing, merely tiny squares of dark blue fabric set on a calico with a faint complimentary shade vining throughout and not the masterwork that the flower basket piece is. To my recollection, I had never seen either before Friday when I opened them out to air. It was a hard choice, to keep or to sell, so I compromised and folded my least favorite back across a dresser to be viewed by potential buyers.

In this day of quilting classes in almost any craft store and machines to make the projects quick and simple, antique quilts are often seen in the same light as granny afghans by all but the true connoisseur. As it happens, the mother of one of my yard sale customers makes her living as a professional textile restorer, so when the daughter spotted Old-old's quilt, she swept it up in a heartbeat. My regrets at putting it up for sale were soon diminished as we talked more, and as she seemed to be willing to take steps to preserve my great-grandmother's work, I wound up trying to give her two antique Iranian prayer shawls (silk, and in poor condition), but she insisted on paying for them as well. Nevertheless, as she drove away, I experienced a quick, sad moment when I wanted to run after her van to ask that Old-old's artistry might be returned.

That evening, as I was putting away the blankets and other things which could be damaged by dew, I slid back the door on a cabinet I had thought was empty. There, wadded in a heap, was another quilt, finished but for binding the edge. Similar to the blue one I had let go, this one was larger (double bed) and composed of larger squares. It is in the drier as I write, soaked and gently washed, and now destined to be finished by my own hands in a tribute to the great-grandmother I knew so briefly. Guide my hands, Old-old, that I may do your work justice and preserve your art for another generation.

The shelves have fallen. The afghans have walked off en masse. The yarns have unravelled in less than tidy skeins, and all the old framed photos have faded from memory. In the second day of the current yard sale, two-thirds of the clutter from two lives has gone to new spots to gather dust. I shall mourn bits of it briefly, and then rejoice for the lessening of my imprint upon the environment. Today, I acted the full Aborigine, simply giving away much of what has outlived its purpose with me into the hands of someone with a need. I am preparing for walkabout, that I may act when its time comes due, free to shift my camp without burden or backward glance.

(A vignette...interesting word, that, specified by Mr. Webster as originating from the same source as 'vine,' and in one definition, "a running ornament...as of vine leaves, tendrils and grapes..." Never mind the kudzu! "...put on or just before the title page or at the beginning or end of a chapter.")

If Gus and I enjoyed the protection of the cabin in a way not changed even in this present day, not so the backpacker who went on past the cabin cut-off and to the rustic camping area beside the lake a further mile or so down-valley. At that time, a three-sided shelter stood close to the water (a structure long since torn down and not replaced), and up against one wall, a wooden rowboat leaned, ostensibly for the ranger's exclusive use but often employed by a visitor as well. Ah, those were the times! Folk would take advantage of the ranger's blind eye, fish a bit, and then replace the little craft exactly as it had been found; a gentleman's agreement, as it were, and as long as the boat was cared for, the ranger was willing to look the other way from his official stance.

One early morning, the two of us set forth to attempt to entice a change from pancakes to the breakfast table, for nothing is as good to the early riser as a fresh-caught trout, lightly dipped in meal and fried to a delicate crispness. The small boat was in its accustomed spot, and only a brief portage was required to launch it on the glassy water with two passengers aboard. As the sun rose, threads of mist thickened into a soft mass hanging on the lake's surface, and a haze appeared to blank its reflective sheen as if pollen had blown in and sugared a polished crystal plate. Into this Camelot, my uncle rowed until we could anchor ourselves at a respectable distance from the shoreline, and then with some moderate degree of expertise, he rigged two poles with the time-tested array of bobber and worm and cast the baits out toward the lake's deep center.

With the accuracy that only hindsight provides us, I see now that my uncle was no fisherman, for this water is best worked with a lure resembling a frog and cast from shore to the edge of the dropoff created by an ancient lava tube. It has provided me with many fine trout over the years, fat and healthy rainbows left to grow wild from the stocking practices of Gus' era, but bobbers were what he knew then of fishing, so fish with them was precisely what we did.

My experience with the Art Piscatorial at this phase of my life was the delight of hooking bullhead after bullhead from a local pier. The thought that something edible could be withdrawn from the water intrigued me, but as children are wont to do, I allowed my attention to drift from the appointed task, and at exactly the wrong moment. My bobber lived up to its name unnoticed by me, but when Gus alerted me to its sudden disappearance, it was already too late to set the hook. The one chance I had been given by the Fish Gods was gone and with it, all chance of breakfast for not another strike was forthcoming. Two skunked fishermen replaced the boat beside the shelter and climbed the route to the cabin empty-handed, and to yet another pancake feed.

Was it yesterday or the day before when the significance of this series of vignettes registered with me? I don't recall. The subconscious mind is a tricky little fellow, able to get inside the densest overgrowth to reach some hidden root. I count back the years...ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty...and almost to the date, I am there again with Gus, celebrating a milestone anniversary. The vine is in full bloom, and in kudzu's blossom is a fragrance sweet as memory.

(A glad, good September Morn to you, my faithful readers! As promised, I am continuing the epic...)

The story goes that once upon a tour of duty, my uncle Gus sallied forth shortly after supper intending to pay a brief visit to the one-holer behind the cabin. He had taken the Readers Digest, the better to "cogitate" (as he expressed it), but as he read, the light of day seemed to fail untimely. He looked up. Much to his surprise, the open doorway was filled with a hirsute torso, the forequarters of a massive bear resting on the roof of the privy.

Now knowing the size of the average black bear, I can say with some certainty that this tale is exaggerated. However, a bear's body blocking your only exit from a structure not known for the durability and engineering of its design might tend to jade one's view. As the story was related to his friends and family, Gus remained seated, fearing to move a single muscle until dawn of the following morning when the bear casually strolled away. I do know there was truth in a parallel story: that an old rogue had to be shot in the same area because he was vandalizing campsites, so I do not doubt that Gus saw a bear from his inconvenient viewpoint, but I do question the estimation of its size and the duration of my uncle's purported reign.

With these two stories in my child's mind, I dearly wanted to see a bear, and to that purpose Gus applied himself to building an excessive number of pancakes for breakfast the subsequent morning. The stump outside the kitchen window had served before as a table for wildlife, so as we ate the fluffy, pockmarked pancakes which had cooked on the stove's griddle portion, Gus placed another outsized one where we could watch from the safety of the cabin. We waited. A few grey jays came and made short work of the hotcake, so Gus replaced it with another. Again we waited. Alas, our offerings were for naught, or at least as far as witnessed. At no point during our tenure did a bear show its muzzle, although we continued feeding the jays each morning, much to their delight.

Walking from the cabin southwestward, one could reach a reedy meadow surrounded on three sides by craggy peaks. It was here that Gus took me one morning and described most beautifully a place beyond the rugged horizon, a valley wide and deep, ribboned with creeks and tinted with every hue of wildflower ever seen. He himself had never been there (few had been), and as he told of it, my soul felt the pull of this mysterious place as if it were my long-forgotten home. My enchantment with it even then superceded my hope to someday climb the Mountain, an undeniable and unfathomable necessity, moreso than any mere desire. And someday, long into the future, I would indeed be reborn there in a September (a story which select readers already know and understand, so I will not re-tell it here).

As we left behind the marsh marigolds and knotweed, we had another mission to accomplish: filling the water containers from the giggling creek which refreshed a small, deep lake a mile or so beyond the cabin. We rounded a huge grey erratic, meaning to dip from the deeper pool which had formed at its base, and my eye caught a glimpse of white which begged a closer look. The object was soon to become a literal 'bone of contention' between Gus and me because I was as determined to take it home as he was that I should leave it. I know now that it was the thighbone of an elk although at the time, I was convinced I had found a bona fide tyrannosaurus rex's knucklebone.

This bone hefted slightly over two pounds. From learning that, you will no doubt draw an obvious conclusion. After many attempts to relieve me of my prize, the final round was my victory. When we packed to leave the cabin for the last time, I determinedly invented an excuse to make a last patrol behind the building with my pack (with my pack, mind you!) to the spot where I was sure Gus had hidden it. I tucked the bone tidily beneath some clothing so no telltale white glint could give me away, and Gus did not discover my subterfuge until we unpacked in my mother's kitchen. Tyrannosaurus' knucklebone remains one of my most prized possessions to this very day, resting on a faded and worn silk pillow which my great-grandmother brought across the country in a covered wagon.

(A quick mental review suggests that there is at least one more memory to be plucked from this vine, so I will beg your indulgence once again. Kudzu! It grows and grows and grows...)

August passes away tonight, her days done and her time come. She fades beneath the Mountain, leaves the fields in a shroud of thistledown. The sky has mourned her, letting fall tears on her coverlet of fog and mist, and the birds have flown from her domain of leaf and blossom into the realm of autumn golds and browns. Autumn passes, and we bid her farewell.

Morning rises in September's glory with a star pricking the eastern sky beyond the jagged hills. Sweet colors flood the valleys, cascading down from the summit's snowy reach in a tide capped with frost on shadow; the gift of the season, borne from distant meadows where creeks are sprung forth from the hillsides, alive.

Rejoice in this rebirth and go out beneath a glad, good September Morn!

(the tendrils of the tale lengthen...)

The final group of switchbacks (fourteen in number, following the twenty-three of the forested trail) repeatedly reversed itself through a rainbow of wild blossoms. The white Sitka valerian gave the pervading aroma to the meadow with each umbel bearing a variety of winged insects, most of which were too dazed with nectar to leave their perches even when the hikers brushed up against the stalks. An odd tigerfly here and there suspended like a helicopter in front of someone's nose, and looking ever so much like a bee in a threatening posture, stared down the intruder into its territory for a brief moment before darting off in flight almost too rapid to follow.

Gus' adventures with snow were not yet done when we reached the top of the ascent. Here again, it lay thick on the ground and, down at the bottom of its sharply banked side, a patch of water opened with small floes of ice dotting it like dumplings. I was introduced to another new word at this point, "glissade," every bit as slippery as its sibilance portends. The procedure was to be effect thusly: a short run, a hop to gain impetus, and then a slide with nothing more than boots for skis, ostensibly while maintaining an erect posture. On this one point, Gus fell down...literally. He landed firmly on his can at high warp, tabbed a patch of water ice and was launched unceremoniously downhill toward the waiting frigid pool. My mirth was only partly undone when the expected conclusion failed to materialize and my dear uncle came up short of actually going into the water. Chastened, he had no desire to give a second lesson and we proceeded on across the saddle and down its eastern slope past a field of scree where marmots greeted us with cheerful whistles.

Approximately two-thirds of our journey was complete as we began the descent to the tiny cabin. Again the trail entered forest, and amid an understory of blue huckleberry, Canadian dogwood opened its starry eyes. I never asked the name of any flower, the child not realizing that such beauties had any need of nomenclature. It was enough to witness them in their habitat and, like an Aborigine, to sense their place in the natural world as one no less important than my own. We crossed a babbling creek guarded by basaltic monoliths, dodged this way and that for a quarter mile from the main trail following a more obscure path, and at last came to our temporary home in a cleared area not much larger than its dimension.

I recall the scuffed, unfinished door and the hasp and lock which hung on its right side, but I question this memory because I have been there so many times since that the old cabin fades into a monochrome overlaid with the brighter image of the new. I believe I see it in my mind's eye, but possibly I err. I do, however, see the interior with eidetic accuracy: the twin cots laid from west to east, the window above the shallow sink facing the dawn, the stove with its blackened lids beside the rear exit and a grey granite coffee pot on the hob, and a plain, weathered board table slightly off-center and occupying most of the single room. Here I would spend ten days of my life, often wrestling with the homesickness which was for me a new experience, but always so curious about the next day that fear never managed to master me. I was learning even then the way of the climber, the lure of the peak greater than the deepest of misgivings. My life was being shaped by this first determined conquest, the spirits of the hills and woodland ever my mentors and their guidance calling me on.

For now, my faithful readers, we will leave these two travellers because they have come a long and weary way from civilization to this rustic paradise. As Gus reads the last words of a chilling science-fiction terror tale to his little niece, he reaches to the kerosene lamp, turns it down, and its blue eye fades into a lingering pinpoint, sputters once and dies. The darkness is absolute, and the bears are about in the woods.

(Can you sleep? I think not. Ah, but tomorrow, the tale picks up again.)

(continuing from yesterday)

As I mentioned in the previous installment, the first part of the track went relatively level beside a rambunctious, opaque river and, in a mile and a bit, the trail turned from the forest and led out into a jumble of round boulders, grapefruit to bushel-sized, coming at last to a footbridge built of a single flat-sawn log which spanned thirty feet of pounding water. Beyond its nether end, the hillside steepened sharply. Here, the trail began its series of switchbacks, winding back and forth and climbing, inexorably climbing through wooded country with very little undergrowth. It was a brown way, stumps and soil and timber, spotted only with outcrops of basaltic rock and overhung with an evergreen canopy fifty feet above.

Now Gus was no slouch, young and healthy as he was, but this ascent was (and still is) a right bugger, and he was porting 65 pounds. It didn't take long before he was ready to heel over to trailside and have a breather. He'd expected me to be the first to peter out, you see, and that wasn't happening. This new world was calling to me, each twist of the path revealing something I'd never seen before, whether it was some twisted root, dry creek bed or exotic saprophyte. Everywhere I peered, my eyes fell on curiosities and, bold as Lewis and Clark combined, I wasn't planning on leaving any stones unturned. As Gus heaved and gasped on some boulder, I shed my pack and dashed on ahead, then back to tell him what I'd discovered, then ahead again heedless of the fact that I'd be going that way soon. I remember clearly the feeling of buoyancy when the pack dropped from my shoulders, and my lightened feet had no choice but to lift from the ground to run.

Today, I call a certain waypoint Fivetree for a cluster of evergreen trunks at the side of the trail. This spot at the top of the first series of switchbacks marks a breakaway from one regime to another, the point where beargrass begins and the rocks are often covered with moss. Here too, snowline often occurs just as it did those fifty years ago. Gus, more acquainted with the dangers of travelling across undermined snowfields, quickly cautioned me to mind my step lest I punch through. No sooner than the words left his mouth, he suddenly shortened on the horizon and found himself sitting with one leg straight out in front of him with the other dangling in a runnel of icy water. Of course, I found the scene hilarious and was no help at all in his efforts to extract himself from the very peril he had warned me against.

The snow was patchy. Only this one area was heavily burdened with it and once we'd passed over a hundred yards or so, we were back in summertime, flanked by wildflowers and the occasional huge toad lurking beneath their cover. My memory enlarges the creatures to dinner-plate size, but that was only a child's perception. I have seem them there in subsequent years, warty and dry and no more than the width of my palm.

The scent is another recollection I can almost grasp today, although they say the body has no olfactory memory. In pure scientific principle, that may indeed be so because an odor is no more than the action of a molecule in a given parts-per-million on the receptors of the nose, but if I think about it hard, the fragrance is nearly tangible: juniper, lupine, valerian and alpine fir. It came to me with every breath, alien and invigorating, drawn up from the cleft valley by towering cliffs I was yet to see. At last, we came out of woods beneath their auspice, into a meadow so filled with blooming wonder that the eye could scarce leave it to rise and view the peaks. More switchbacks lay ahead, and the broad summit of the pass which would decline into another valley where a small log cabin waited two travellers' arrival.

(Hm...I think I'll string my readership along for a bit more...this narrative seems to bear an odd similarity to kudzu in it growth habit...)

It was the summer of 1956. My dad had passed away only that spring, and my uncle Gus (my mother's brother) was trying very hard to fill the empty place in my heart. I worshiped Gus. His head was filled with marvelous toys to entertain me, like algebra and relativity which he'd trot out whenever I got bored with the humdrum of elementary school. But there was another side of Gus which captivated me even more: Gus, my best-loved uncle, was a forest ranger.

He served at a backcountry cabin set nine miles from the trailhead, and no easy miles were they, climbing repetitive, unrelenting switchbacks to gain 4000 feet, only to drop half that elevation yet again beyond the crest. It took him the better part of a day to get to his station on foot, laden with a pack and supplies for a ten-day stint. His descriptions of the place were enthralling, without a doubt beyond the imagination of his niece who only knew the big Mountain from afar. As he would speak of glaciers and wildflowers and thick evergreen forests, my mind conjured up a magical land, peopled with bears and marmots, wrapped in mist and, central to the scene, a small log house, warm and snug as a down comforter.

The family had been to the trailhead once, walking the first flat portion beside a ribbon of glacial water as it churned through its bouldered bed. I had been rather disappointed on that one occasion, mistaking the word 'silt' for 'silk' and expecting to see long, shimmering strands of thread gathering on my fingers as I trailed them in the icy water instead of the slurry of grit which muddied my hand. I nevertheless found a gem there, adding another word to the lexicon with which I often alienated my peers impressively and proudly.

Over the young days of summer, my recollection of the area took me on the first steps toward what would become a growing passion. I longed to go over the mountain like the bear of song and fable, to see what I could see. Even now, I have no idea what strings Gus must have pulled or if perhaps he breached regulation, but toward the end of July or early August, he suggested to my mother that I might be allowed to go with him for one ten-day tour of duty. She agreed, and so my life's first true adventure began. With a 35-pound pack slung from my nine-year old shoulders and a 65-pound tube radio carried upon his, Gus and I set forth early one morning. I'm sure he had misgivings about the trip and my ability to withstand the rigors, but oh, Gus! There was no way you could have known!

(to be continued tomorrow)

Sweet September's coming! She's hiding 'round the bend
Where August turns to Autumn and the golden colors blend
Into hues of red and russet and the fluff of thistles flies.
I see her in her hiding place. There sweet September lies.

In the puffy clouds of daybreak, her blushing face appears,
Peering at the mountains over sparkling dewdrop tears
Shed in joy for morning as the yellow moon rides high.
September's dawn is breaking against the star-flecked sky.

Throw back the spread of August, sweet September, and awake!
You rise to find your beauty mirrored in an alpine lake
Where mayflies dance like faeries in their gauzy, breezy lace.
September, sweet September, blithe and fairest in your grace!

The hawk will sing devotions and the chorus of the hills
Will magnify in echo from the peaks and rocky rills
Where the updrafts bear a fragrance in the crisp, brisk morning air,
As September carves her memory on the scarps arising there.

Make way for sweet September! She is coming like a bride
Down the aisle of August where she'll stand by Autumn's side
In innocence and virtue as her soul was ever born,
Given to her lover; our glad, good September Morn!

The second day of my proprietorship has so far been busy and silly, precisely the character and mood so many of us are working to restore. Several of the newcomers have caught the sense of the place and with their contributions, we seem to be regaining the 80%/20% ratio of "good stuff" to "drivel," as it was aptly expressed to me in a private message from one of my cohorts, the Snail.

The day began very playfully, if with only a few participants, but soon the others were joining in with the same spirit and verve. The bar has a life of its own; from one minute to the next, it can turn on a dime, soar like a rocket and head off on some wild tangent to the original intent. It is as much an organism as the weather and as changeable and, of course, that's what its patrons love about it.

Recently, there has been an influx of new people who simply don't get it, and lack the maturity to stand back long enough to figure out the rules of the road. I was very much at sea when the Snail first introduced me around. Everyone seemed to be sharing 'in' jokes which plainly excluded me from participation. Unlike our newest group, however, I took a chair in the corner and spent some time observing before I made an attempt to fit in. My first tries were fumbling and often fell flat, but when no one responded to my intrusions, I did not go away mad, recognizing it as a failure of my own rather than any intended slight. Instinctively rather than consciously, I became aware of the collective's personality until one day above my head, the proverbial Aha Light clicked on. I made a post and lo, and behold! It was well-received. The distinction between it and my previous invasions was so slight that you could not have defined it, but it opened a door and admitted me to the inner circle.

I have come far since that day, and spent eight long months absent following my shoulder injury. There had been one significant upheaval while I was away, driving off some of the older members, but the bar kept on, a bit stilted and edgy, undercurrents brewing finally into the latest eruption. My family was again in crisis, and my heart went out to them in this tone poem:

Crow looks down from the safety of her Branch,
Sees sadness among her friends.
She wishes she could share with them
Some of the happiness she has found here
Among their number,
Wishes she could follow the stories of their lives unfolding,
But now they walk away with anger and tears in their eyes.

Words cannot be retracted.
They are tenacious in their grip,
But they can be forgiven.
The sun should never have to set
On an angry word.

We come from all walks of life and from many beliefs,
Friends and strangers.
We have lives, we have turmoils, we have joys,
We have crises, triumphs and perils,
And each factor changes our way of looking at the world.
We are not text. We are not our avatars.
We are community, and we are Cheers.

Again, many felt they no longer had a home and drifted off to another place. Those closest to me (Bob, Mouse and the Snail) stood by me, offering counsel, working diligently on the sidelines, supporting me when I was near the point of exhaustion, and bit by bit, we began regaining lost ground. Some of the other old hands were working independently as well. In full awareness that the bar might die on my shift, I offered to take it over at the end of its run. I believed there was hope, even though many others were ready to kiss the place goodbye.

And that brings us to the events of the last two days. I now hold the keys to Cheers for better or for worse until the patrons have filled 400 pages. The winds may blow and the tides may turn, but today, I planted kudzu down by the pond!

The keys to the bar were handed off to me this morning, and rather unexpectedly at that. I'm sure I was not alone in expecting that the old place wouldn't close until Sunday or Monday, but when I entered this morning groping blindly for my coffee, I failed to see the current owner's notice posted at the door. Bob called my attention to it. For several minutes, I was nonplused, despite having a carefully orchestrated changeover diagrammed, and once I'd gotten my bearings and scanned the room, I realized that the cast of players was far from complete which further complicated the situation. The Snail was soon to be off to the Vampire Shop, Mouse was scampering back and forth between home duties and the window, and most of the other patrons weren't yet out of bed.

We were under time constraints, undefined except as waiting on the arrival of the official who would padlock the door. It wasn't quite an eviction, but as close as made no never mind, so Bob began by removing his father's and my father's service medals from the Veterans' Wall even as I set up the chairs and tables, started the coffee, strung the Grand Opening banner preparatory to flinging wide the doors. I had not had time to send out individual invitations to those of our number who have gone missing since the turmoil, but I also knew that a few well-placed words would filter down to them in a very short time.

With a quick exchange of PMs, Bob and I were synchronized. The Crow Bar opened for business and the medals were hung within less time than it takes to refresh a page. The regulars straggled in, morning not being the customary hour at which changes of ownership generally occur but, since this was the Crow's bar after all, it was only logical to effect the switch when the Coffee Crowd was waiting for their morning brew. As soon as the heady aroma started drifting out into the street, the two of us were joined by Goldfinch, Snail, Jay and the Pig and even Metro, Bob's Yorkie, found a quiet niche where he wouldn't be trampled by the moving crew.

Bit by bit, things were carried across the street from the old bar to the new, and folks brought in housewarming gifts for the new owner. That was a turn-up of solidarity which I hadn't expected, and as more and more images of crows cropped up, I couldn't help but get a tear in my eye. As I've worked to save the bar over these past few weeks, I've often wondered if anyone outside our own small cluster has cared if it would survive. As I watched the social scene developing in the new bar, I was struck with a moment of nostalgia for the old, despite its conflicts and woes. I decided to go back and check on the place.

She was gone, but her big voice was still rebounding from the bare walls and darkened niches. The Mouse had sung the old bar's passing, and sung it well. You can hear her even now...

-stands with paws full of odds and ends, pausing before leaving-
Left a chuck o' my heart here, this time...when you fight fer something, it means more to you, somehow...
-Steps up to stage area...there is no mic, but there is power in mouse's voice-

And I, never thought I'd feel this way
And as far as I'm concerned
I'm glad I got the chance to say
That I do believe I love you

And if, I should ever go away
Well then close your eyes and try
To feel the way we do today
And then if you can remember

Keep smiling, keep shining
Knowing you can always count on me, for sure
That's what friends are for
For/In good times and/in bad times
I'll be on your side forever more
That's what friends are for

Well you came and opened me
And now there's so much more I see
And so by the way I thank you

And then, for the times when we're apart
Well then close your eyes and know
These words are coming from my hearts
And then if you can remember

Keep smiling, keep shining
Knowing you can always count on me, for sure
That's what friends are for
For/In good times and/in bad times
I'll be on your side forever more
That's what friends are for

-steps down..-
So....
-picks up odds and ends and with a swirl of her tail, exits-

KUDZU!

And on that note, I'm going fishing.

The yard looks so nice. The euphemistically-termed lawn has been shorn of its yellow heads and fuzzy pompoms and has turned a very attractive shade of brown beneath old Sol's tanning lamp. Oh, it has some green freckles, persistent warts of hawkbeard dotted here and there, but nothing to really mar the comeliness of dead, dry grass. Yes, this is beauty in its finest hour!

The question is: will it last? And the answer, unfortunately, is: Probably not. This is western Washington we're discussing and although it's been dry, the wet is just around the corner. A part of me wonders why that isn't capitalized as it is in Australia: the Wet. Perhaps the distinction lies in that we seldom have a Dry to contrast it.

It doesn't take much to rejuvenate this scrabbly, scraggy stuff we call "lawn" in the country. A few damp fogs, and it'll be back in full force and tough as nails. Autumn's mowings are not so much a cutting as a bending, and two passes with the mower are often required to accomplish even that. The tender top two inches clip readily, leaving a well-honed spike projecting up from each basal rosette of our so-called "dandelions" stiff enough to scratch a bare leg.

On the bright side, the hawkbeard tends to push the true grasses aside, so perhaps some day, only dark green whorls will remain at ground level among the sturdier fanciwork of sharp-fringed canary grass, and their maze of yellow-topped standards may forget to lead to the door where the mower waits.

My father had a left-handed sense of humour, one that would approach from your blind side, tag you on the shoulder and be gone before you could realize you'd been had. As a kid, I couldn't appreciate the sporting he did with my mother, my uncle or his peers, nor do I remember specific examples to cite from my own experiences in his woodshop or garage, just that he often made me laugh with abandon. He was a playful man with his young daughter, insofar as his failing health would permit, often making light some task I had been set by turning it into a fun-filled venture. Time blunts accurate recollection and, as I have said, I cannot draw up from the well of memory any specific instance to illustrate my point.

Forgetful of this side of the man I loved most dearly of all in my life, I knelt at his graveside yesterday to ask his blessing on the one who is now the center of my existence. The vagaries of cell phones had already disconnected my link with Bob twice, once during his address to God and once during simple conversation. The former I could understand; the prayer was not meant for my ears despite its content, and I had no business eavesdropping. The latter was an inconvenience which sent me back to the car to charge the battery.

So rejuvenated, the phone allowed Bob to rejoin me at the headstone where I silently presented him to my father. My tears showered the verdigris and dappled the granite as I sobbed, 'My father was a good, good man."

And, right there in front of my Daddy, Bob spoke those three deep words, prefaced by my name, repeating them when I remarked on the significance. "Pet, I love you." Right there again, in front of my Dad.

As my emotions swept me into a new spate of tears, I could barely speak to utter the words of my heart to the man in faraway Georgia, "And you are a good, good man, Bob...like my daddy."

Ah, we were on serious turf just then, lovers asking countenance, seeking a sign. Oh, and we got it straight away from my father's keen sense of the ridiculous. With a sudden spurt which left me drenched, the cemetery sprinkler system turned on, its eight-foot arc baptising me into this new life with my chosen. I could hear my father chuckling as he dismissed us: "Go on, you two kids. Enjoy each other!"

As I make ready to visit my dad's grave for the last time, insight comes to me bright as a meteor streaking through the night sky: I am a Crow through my father's love.

When I was young, my long hair was black and, swept back and unconfined, fell in arcs from my temples quite like those of a character in the "Dick Tracy" panels, a young girl known as "Wings." It was she who gave my father a nickname for me, lost in antiquity until this very morning when I took scissors in hand, intending to clip a wiry lock to leave beside his headstone. As I stretched a filament of the greying, dry hay to sever, some Intangible directed the blades to the sweep at my temples and in that instant, I remembered: "Wings," for the raven-black tresses of the little girl who loved her Daddy so, ebony wings of a fledgling Crow.

I cannot hear his voice, the voice of my father, but his scent is a dear memory. He wore Old Spice, and forever will it be to me the odor of a father's devotion. In color, I associate him with coffee brown for the suits he wore, and for the earth he tilled: coffee, joe, Joe. Coincidence? There are no coincidences in the shaman's world.

Seven beings unite in the Dreaming tomorrow: my beloved, his parents, my parents, myself and Cocoa. A Crow goes flying north for the last time to ask a father's blessing on the man of her destiny.

You won't find this in the city. I had a letter to mail yesterday and didn't want to leave it sitting in the mailbox for a variety of reasons. One, this rural community is plagued by mail thefts: lifting little old ladies' pension checks provides a reliable second source of income to the numerous methamphetamine manufacturers in the area. Two, we have a new mail carrier who may or may not deliver today's mail today because he's forgotten where the last box on the route is (mine) despite it being on the main highway. Although he's had over a month to get the system down, my mail is often returned to the holding post office in the evening, undelivered in his haste to get home to wife and kids.

That said, there's an up side. As I handed my mail across the counter (strictly prohibited by current postal regulation), another customer came up and stretched his arm through the window beside mine. The man had a familiar face, to be sure, but I could not have said his name. The postmistress accepted my letter with one hand and his vacuum-sealed parcel with the other. "Yesterday's?" she asked the man at my elbow.

An older chap, he nodded wordlessly. The postmistress then reached under her counter and brought up a pair of scissors. A quick snip let a pleasing aroma into the tiny office. She spread the edges of the thick plastic wrappings apart, shook the contents partway out and assessed them, my letter still in her other hand. Thrusting the plastic-wrapped packet toward me, she inquired politely, "Would you like a piece?" At my hesitation, she added, "It's ground so it isn't stringy."

Her other patron confirmed my supposition as to the contents' origin, so I reached out a long sliver of the best venison jerky I have had in ages and stood gnawing on it as a post-breakfast treat, now engaged in a discussion of the various recipes kept secret in this narrow little valley of ours and the folks who hold their unrecorded patents. It was a good way to start a day, with a sense of community and sharing. I had gone to mail a letter, wound up in converse with two nameless friends over a metaphorical coffee pot.

Nope, you won't find that in the city, "$4.13, please. May I help the next person in line?" being only a forced civility. No venison jerky there, not even with a pricetag. Sad, that...very sad.

Kudzu! Bob thinks I'm silly, but I'm fascinated by kudzu. If I had a slip of it, I'd grow it as a houseplant, just to see how long it would take to climb the walls, cross the living room, engulf the piano and devour the cat. Anything with that vigorous a spirit can't be all bad, y'know? There's a lesson in kudzu: take all you can get from life!

I'm sure my kudzu fixation originates in the word itself, a word which ranks with "arugula" and "rutabaga" on my list of words which are fun to say, never mind that I spent a good portion of my life saying it incorrectly. It's 'CUD-zu,' like a cow chewing, rather than 'kood-zoo' which to me sounds more properly Japanese.

That's where the improper stuff comes from then, Japan. It was once cultivated for animal fodder. "Well, that's a noble beginning," you might say, as is the fact that it's exemplary in its ability to control erosion. Under ideal conditions (let's say in the niche behind my chair which is lit by both north and east windows), it has the potential to grow as much as sixty feet a year. I could easily harvest enough for dinner every night at that rate. Oh yes, it's quite edible! (I can just see Bob's face now when I tell him we're having kudzu greens for dinner.) It can be used as a tonic or as a tea and, stripped of the leaves, its vines may be woven into sturdy, useful baskets.

So where did this estimable plant go astray, that it now has such an unsavoury reputation? I'd guess because it's envied.

How many of your acquaintances start their conversations with the bad events of their day? How many bewail their aches and pains? Our friend kudzu is healthy, fit, and its news is solely good and upbeat: today an acre, tomorrow the world! Let's hear it for kudzu, the gormandizing consumer who never needs to diet. It achieves its lofty ambitions, unlike so many of us humble humans, and its zest cannot be stifled by anything or anyone. Kudzu never has a bad day.

Yes, we envy kudzu. We resent its ability to survive and prosper despite whatever adversity confronts it when we really should be trying to emulate it. Kudzu! Good on ya, mate! I love the grand unquenchable stuff!

In Georgia, the legend says
That you must close your windows
At night to keep it out of the house.
The glass is tinged with green, even so,
As the tendrils crawl over the fields.
-----James Dickey

The first hint of autumn has appeared at the tips of the vine maple scrub in front of the house. It's more than a blush. In fact, one of the lower twigs bears a good thirty carmine leaves and a smattering of golden-brown ones that weren't there yesterday. Ah, sweet September is just around the bend, and none too soon.

August has been a month of endings, from Carlson's death to my mother's consignment to the Dreaming, and today another small life spent. If August's weather has been dry, her soil has been wetted with closure's tears and her harvest reaped in grieving. She has not been kind, August, in delivering her strict lessons, teacher with rule in hand to smack the knuckles of her pupils when they fail to attend her words. Although severe, her tutelage has also been thorough in showing us how to look beyond our boundaries to become better beings, to see past the barricades of self.

Such will be my tribute to one known as Maggie, for it was she who caught me out in a selfish moment which I already knew better than to indulge. To mark her passing and to remind me of her wisdom, a spray of vine maple stands on the vanity. Go with good spirits, little friend.

It's Limerick Night in the forum we frequent, and I am finding it seriously difficult to pull away from the silliness and compose myself for structured writing. Perhaps it would be best if I didn't even try, because there is something welled up within me, wanting to burst forth in rampant, carefree joy.

Earlier in the day, after a long session on the phone doing nothing more than listening to my love bustling about in his office, setting up experiments, searching for lost files, muttering to himself and to me all the while, I felt the need to dance with wild abandon. I put on music (Jim Croce, "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown") and cavorted around the living room in a cross between belly dance and boogie until my heart rate was more rapid than it would have been after half an hour's aerobic exercise. I felt good..."gooder" than I've felt in dog's years, alive in a beautiful world, Crow in an unguarded cornfield with the pickin's ripe and easy. This is the effect he has on me. A few simple words -not necessarily the three deep words or our code of promise- a few words, and by the sound of his voice and its echo in my spirit, I am gone to Georgia and in his arms again, in the magic of the Rainbow.

September Morn is just around the corner. My eyes search the hill across the street for a telltale blush on the vine maples, but so far, nothing. August still has us in its grip. It is not time to celebrate, only to wait patiently for the invitation to arrive.

The hawkbeard stands tall in the yard, the grass beneath it only marginally ready for its last cropping of the year. The yellow heads have not fluffed, so they are ignored by the troop of goldfinches which rely on the feeders for the bulk of their provisions. This year, it appears they'll have a smorgasbord because the full acreage of the pasture across the way is near bursting with thistles ready to spill their seed into the wind. It is the time of harvest, recognized by the creatures who live in accord with Nature, a time of gathering, community and home.

I do long for the first September to arrive, to usher in the beautiful month. September Morn marks the beginning/end of my calendar, a date akin to New Year's but with the significance of Christmas. Several years have passed registering neither the effects of a chilling alpine bath upon my body (the annual ceremony which marks this time and season) nor the purification which it gives me as it washes away the dross of humanity. If circumstance allows, I will go into the hills on the first of September, strip and plunge into water that only a polar bear could truly appreciate. I will lave myself, soaking every inch of skin and hair until I am close to hypothermia, then stand to dry in whatever breeze the season affords me. It takes only a few minutes of brisk hiking to speed fresh blood through my veins, restoring my body to a forgotten, youthful vigour.

September is rebirth, born again in spirit and body. Bath or no, I shall see a Glad, Good September Morn.

*****

For the parents who watch from Heaven on their anniversary, love and a promise. Thank you for that which you have created in soul and substance. I will hold him ever in my heart, and love him until my life ends.

We are simultaneous.

I begin to type a text message. The phone rings in my hand. Recurrently. Almost consistently.

He dreams me, and notes the time. Three hours into another time zone, I dream the same dream and note the time.

My eyelids are heavy while he naps in his recliner. I wake when he wakes, whatever the hour of day or night.

This weekend, we consigned kin to Heaven and to the spirits together, learning from each other the ways we react to grief and pain.

As I spread my mother's ashes around the Frog Bog, Uncle Charlie was journeying to God's Kingdom along a well-lit path. As Charlie reached the Gates, my mother was entering the Dreaming.

I am in awe of the magic here.

Bob&Pet

Continuing from yesterday:

As I picked up two small stones from beside the one covering our eternal union of spirits, I looked through flowing mist as it threaded through the sub-alpine firs. I stared across the shallow plane of water, past the tendrils of grass which lay in tangle on its surface, rooted somewhere in its muddy bottom; My eyes took in the colors, wildflowers painted in dabs and splashes on a wash of varied greens. I saw the soil, sandy and wind-ravaged, tan, coarse and cere, and the bleached stubs of contorted trees which had fallen long ago decaying into fragments on its surface. I witnessed polliwogs in thousands, wriggling in communal masses, and the tiny froglings making merry among the leaves of low blueberry and partridge-foot. Beyond, veiled by cloud, the north face of the Mountain threw down spindrift and rock, and the glacier moaned. And as I looked, taking in the full tableau of one of the Earth's most beauteous wonders, I said goodbye to these makers of my soul; I have given my heart elsewhere: to a man in a strange new world, and it is to him I will go, never to see these sights again, for such is my love.

And with that thought final, I shouldered my pack and walked away, leaving behind a lifetime and not once looking back.

Sore, aching, and with mincing steps, I picked my way down the waterbars of the gravelly trail, supporting my weight on trekking poles when the steps became too steep for pained knees and hips to accept without complaint. In places, a slip was almost a surety otherwise with the soil clayey and polished. I was grateful for the more level ground in the meadow when I finally reached it, and my steps had already become faltering with six and a half miles yet ahead.

My progress downhill was almost as slow as it had been climbing, if only due to weariness. My feet were not particularly sore, but other joints complained of abuse and my muscles sang in agony. My heart was still burdened with the demons, and many footfalls were accompanied by a rain of tears. No easier was passing by the secret doorway. I looked up its route to the sharply angled steeps and was forced to accept that my day for travelling it had gone. I would that I could have taken my Bear there, to meet the other bear who is its guardian, but the miles are longer and the hills more steep than any I have climbed this day.

As I journeyed onward, cloud broke seldom, but rose enough that finally I could see the glacier's terminus, staring like an eye, weeping its river into the stone-strewn channel leading to the sea. I followed beside its course, down to the suspension bridge and then across, back to the final three-mile stretch where thimbleberries and blackcaps invited me to take them as a gift of nourishment to my soul.

*****

The story does not end there, but I hestitate adding this segment because I have not yet told it to my love who is wrestling with his own pain and grief. I survived the near-encounter because the spirits and his God had their hands on me and waked me from my sleep in time to swerve back into my own lane of traffic as the traveller coming opposite on the highway squealed toward the ditch. It was the fourth or fifth time I had nodded off, and this is something I never do while driving. We missed by narrow feet, the other car and mine, and wiser then, I slapped myself hard on the cheek, rolled down the window to admit the chilly evening air, drank a pint of water to create a discomfort and put on loud music and forced myself to sing along.

At last at home, I stayed up only long enough to write his lullaby. Good night, my love. I'm back.

When people ask me where I'm going,
This is what I say:
I'm going 'til I get there,
I'll only go halfway
Because this is what I've measured,
And this is what I've learned:
No journey's ever over
Until you have returned.

Fourteen miles and four thousand feet gain in elevation might have been a bit much for your narrator, given that the last entry in her trail journal is dated 23 September 2003. Has it really been that long since I donned the Raichles with a distant destination in mind? It hardly seems so. I would have estimated a year and a half, but as I think about it, eight months were spent in pain and recuperation from the shoulder injury. Oh, I've chased Tupperware through the woods, walking up logging roads for five miles or more, but between walking and hiking, there is a significant difference, a semantics which tells of rocks underfoot, angles of incline, forested and overhung pathways, switchbacks, alpine tarns, the scent of wildflowers and so much more.

Following a mostly sleepless night (the second in a row), I left home at 5:10 AM with a two-hour drive ahead of me. The sky was light when I put boot to ground, although the close encroach of trees gave darkness to the deeper shadows. Crisp teeth marked the bite of temperature, so I wore long sleeves over my customary t-shirt, and when I threw the pack over my shoulders, its weight settled uncomfortably across a three-inch scar. With an adjustment of the straps, I transferred the load to the other side, not expecting that later on in the day, the muscles and tendons of my neck and back would writhe into a knot of torment which would necessitate shifting the burden to my bad wing.

In good spirits and "Walkin' Back To Georgia" the beat of my pace, I gained the moderate incline of the first three miles rather swiftly. A drink at a favorite creek kept me cool and refreshed. Then, crossing a wire and plank bridge slung high above a grey, glacial river, progress became more arduous as the trail climbed steeply beneath towering, vertical cliffs rising straight up beside the glacier. In shadow of early morning, this way was cool, and far more pleasant than on many previous ascents.

And I had the trail to myself, despite it being Friday, until I reached the tumbling creek whose headwaters originate in my spirit's birthplace. Here, three folk sat on the bridge below me as I plunged my water bottle into the flow for a long and pleasing drink. Above my location, ten switchbacks wound serpentine, the first several close together, stony and twisting between the root masses of huge fallen firs and hemlock. Flanking the trail, vanilla leaf and bunchberry matted with shoots of mitrewort piercing the carpet. Higher, the pale, small wild rhododendron stood above foamflower and valerian umbels, a panoply of whites and greens against the russet of fallen needles and the brown-grey bark of ancient trees.

As I rounded the last of the switchbacked corners, a darkness overcame my mind with demons of fear. I will not name the horrors, but for a long moment, five or more minutes, the beautiful forest disappeared and I stood stock-still with tears in full cascade. I forgot where I was; indeed, it was not visible to me although my eyes were open until a spirit reached its hand toward me and urged me to go on. A few steps farther, a bend in the trail opened a new panorama, and at its side I saw a Bear. I knew who walked with me then as always, but that was not his only manifestation.

Continuing, I passed a sweet, mossy waterfall and its adjacent rock face, a feature known to me as the Miraculous Stone for its ability to put forth a jet from some unseen pinhole in its surface, a thread of water thinner than a pencil lead, spurting a foot in a graceful arc. Nearby, a deer trail marks the secret doorway to an elysium which I shall not describe within this narrative. Above this point, the dark creatures seized me anew, and although I did not lose sight of the landscape, their rending blinded me with the body's living waters. My eyes filled, and I walked on in a haze, into a wildflower meadow where the Rainbow's colors again brought me from my fears. My emotions were surging and ebbing, victims of exhaustion and me not half done.

With his touch on my shoulder, I went on with a somewhat lighter heart. One meadow turned into a jumble of torn morainal boulders and steep, cracked slopes where marmots and pikas scampered in their haste to supply their homes for winter. Another followed it, broad and long, carved into a bowl of evergreen and high-rising slopes, but I paused before climbing the last of them (a five-hundred foot, steeply angled ascent) because here grew a few lone gentians, harbingers of autumn, spirits of glorious September. I spent time with them, and with other humans who came to admire them, not even knowing their proper name.

The five-hundred foot climb taxed my weary legs to the point that I would go a mere three steps before pausing for rest. I would look up and tell myself the next rock was not so far away that it could not be reached in a simgle burst of energy, but too often it took two or three attempts to reach its milestone. Yet I kept on. There was a summit to be reached. Crawl I would do if need be, for such is the drive that makes the climber a bit less sane than the ordinary man. At last, the slope of the hill gentled into a saddle crested with sub-alpine fir where, in the curve between its horn and cantle, is set a shallow muddy place dotted with rocks and cobbles, surrounded by paintbrush, pedicularis and lupine. There, the home and final resting place of Frog Dreaming's daughter, my mother's ashes would be spread.

First, I had to wait out a pair of campers who had chosen the same spot to take their lunch and spread their various belongings to dry in the sun (a sun that was short-lived and soon to be enveloped in a cloud). I sat chatting with them for an hour or more until the call of their next camp became too strong to resist. Then I was alone with the spirits of my mother's Ancestors in the chill, encroaching mist. I walked with her around the periphery of the tarn, the gypsum-like evidence of her mortal body falling behind me, drifting in the breeze, scattering upon the water. That done, another simple ceremony consigned the essence of my beloved to an eternity with myself, his parents, and the small, feathered child of my heart.

When people ask me where I'm going,
This is what I say:
I'm going 'til I get there,
I'll only go halfway
Because this is what I've measured,
And this is what I've learned:
No journey's ever over
Until you have returned.

Tomorrow, the descent unfolds.

Cedar smoke surrounds me as I address the Four Directions:

From the East, the direction of the Mountain and of the rising sun, comes strength.
From the South, the direction of the Earth, comes stability.
From the West, the direction of the sea and of the setting sun, comes harmony.
From the North, the direction of the wind and of the Aurora Borealis, comes the Current of Life.

Mountain, my guardian. Bob, the foundation of my soul. Harmony...the gift I wish to carry to him. The Aurora, in all its Rainbow colors, covering us with its eternal Light.

I am purified for tomorrow's journey.

From his parents' graves, a pinch of soil. His whiskers. My hair. Cocoa's feathers. My mother's ashes and those of her two favorite pets.

The path I walk is long and weighty and stony and wet with tears of joy and sorrow. We join together beneath the Mountain, molecules of body, bonded in the Dreamtime.

Washingtonians are known for their clarity in enunciation and are generally referred to as unaccented in their speech, with the possible exceptions being those of us who have picked up a bit of the British Columbian tinge. When I lived on the East Coast, I was often mistaken for a Vancouverian, being "oot and aboot in my boot" ("out and about in my boat"), as it were. I will admit a certain degree of affectation here...what is language but a toy, after all?...but nevertheless, I feel my pronunciations are precise and uncoloured by my region.

On the other hand...

"G'morning, gorgeous! Did you get a good night's sleep?"

"Yeiyus, Ah diyud. Ah sleyupt lahk uh lawg. Ah weyunt tew beyud ayut nahn o'clawk an' Ah wuz asleeyup befower mah heyud hiyut thuh piyullow."

Ah, the music! Ah, the lilt! It pours like the proverbial molasses of January, thick and dusky, with a taste that makes you want to lick the bottom of the jar à la Winnie the Pooh. So sweet and spreadable! So utterly delicious! It's slow and sensuous, flows like a lazy summer, falls like magnolia handkerchiefs drifting from the delicate pale fingers of some dainty belle. Butter me another slice!

"Weyull, wheyun Ah wuz draivin' uhrowan' ehfter jaybehx," (our encoded word for 'work') "Ah sahw thuree croaws iyun thuh pahwrkin' lawt an' foahr moahr oahvur ayut thuh chuhrch."

By now, I am paying only partial attention to the substance of the conversation. My ears perk up at the mention of "croaws" because I'm partial to them, but my spirit is among the yellow pines, langorous and soothed by the current of this lyrical, elysian stream. Truth, it's not Georgia but Tennessee I am enjoying, for the strident Georgia tone grates even on this speaker's hearing. I am content to listen, not wanting to interrupt the swaying of the willow's draping boughs. I am drifting, borne along in the "truhk" as a hitchhiker, until we reach the "lih-tul hiyulls" and the connection threatens separation. At the last second, I hear the three deep words, "Ah luhv yew." Ah yes, my love, this I understand.

With tornado warnings to the south of my sweetheart's home, I am refreshing the NOAA radar every five minutes or so. I am amazed by the peculiarities of weather he has experienced today: hail, a drop in temperature of almost 40°, substantial rain falling at one end of a mile-long road, the other end dry as dust. Two inches of precipitation fell not far away, and the daytime high passed the hundred mark. A weather buff, I am more than a little intrigued. These are phenomena I will greatly enjoy observing firsthand (all but the tornadoes, that is), and experiencing in the long term.

A walk in warm rain was one of the things I delighted in during my recent stay in Peachtree City. In the Pacific Northwest, rain is cold at all times of year, despite the ambient air temperature. As I sat out on the gatepost of Line Creek Nature Area watching distant lightning, a cell of moisture passed directly over me. A few drops fell at first, opening the way for a downpour. A light breeze rose, stiffened into a moderate and gusty wind, and dashed the drops against my skin like so many sparkling beads. Even as the temperature plummeted, the living waters of the sky dropped warmly. Had I been in a less public spot, I would have stripped and danced naked beneath their shower, celebrating nature.

As it was, I continued on my perch until I was soaked to the hide. Shirt and shorts were plastered to me, and I was not the least bit uncomfortable. A gusher flowed from the motel's downspout, flooding the parking area to a depth that wet above the soles of my shoes. And it was warm! Warm rain! Sweet as a caress, and as cleansing. Only when I re-entered our room did I feel the chill, and that was due solely to the air conditioning which in itself is one of the South's blessings.

As I check the radar one last time before retiring, I see that the hazardous weather warnings have dissipated with the evening's cooling, and the county in which my lover sleeps has but two small aqua dots to indicate precipitation falling in its wedge. I will rest more easily knowing that he is in little danger of being swept away from me, to Oz with little 'Toto' on his pillow.

The significance of yesterday's blog slipped past me even as I wrote it, and not until I had been prodded with several clues did it become clear. With a gentle nudge, Bob suggested that Friday might be a good day for a hike to the Frog Bog, and my eyes opened to the calendar and the annual recurrence of the Perseids, a time to commemorate my mother in the place where the sky fell.

On my kitchen wall hangs a painting done in the Aboriginal style. The legend reads, "Two women were going to a lake, and they stopped to rest at a billabong where some Frogs were having a corroboree. Those Frogs danced so hard, they broke the sky. In the night, pieces of it fell to the ground on the other side of the ice river." The Dreamtime Beings mark the board with dots of rainbow colors, describing the women's camp, their passage and the fragmentation of the night. It is a simple tale, obliquely hinting at spirits and magic which it assuredly held. Perhaps, however, it would personalize it for my readers to hear the story told in my mother's own words, an excerpt from a letter to Backpacker, published many years ago:

.....

"I was so enchanted by the leprechaun land east of Mystic (I had gone over to touch base on Winthrop in Dad's memory) that the next time I insisted my daughter accompany me. Starting from Sunrise, we camped at Granite Creek (5600' level below Skyscraper), having not reached Sunrise till later afternoon. Winthrop Moraine was murder (at home they reported 105 degrees that day) but quite an improvement over the trek 42 years earlier.

"Mystic camp was full but we had cross-country permits so went on to camp behind Mineral Mountain near the source of the West Fork. Next night we moved to high on Curtis Ridge far above the now-dried-up tadpole bog and spent a sleepless night utterly enthralled by the Perseid's reflections on glacier ice.

"That night is my most treasured memory in well over half a century. Words fail - it can only be experienced.

"My daughter, a Wall freak, went up nearly to the aid pitch the next day, leaving me to luxuriate while filtering out tadpoles and boiling water for supper. Weeks later, after early snow, we again survived the 'killer' up from Ipsut, overjoyed to find the frog bog filled to reflection pool status."

.....

Friday I will set forth before daybreak to drive the distance, climb the miles. When I return, it will be with this memory in my heart, and my love and thanks to the man who remembered an anniversary I failed to note.

It is nearly time to take my mother home. Her ashes have sat on a shelf beside Ganesha, her protector, for almost two years now, mingled with those of two beloved pets and ready for distribution. It is not because I am remiss that this issue has carried over far too long; no, it is because I am unable to take her where she wished to go, barred by my own physical ability and a washed-out road.

It is not possible for me to carry the pack necessary to spend five or six days in the wilderness even if my legs would bear the load. My shoulder injury prevents slinging more than 15 pounds on my back, and even that becomes an intolerable burden by day's end. Her chosen place lies far into the Olympic Mountains, a high, glacial bowl surrounded by craggy peaks framing a silvery lake which mirrors their rugged profiles. The monkeyflower grows there amid the rounded cobbles, its yellow, freckled faces grinning at the sky, and a waterfall dives sharply from the western reach, spilling the life essence of the high mountain into a river which flows directly to the womb of the sea. It was there my mother wished to sail forth, from that very waterfall, to Petra, to Skara Brae and the Isle of Skye. I grieve that I cannot take her there. My day for such adventures passed too soon, wrested from me by injury and age.

From the weeks before she died, I have a memory which I cannot certify: that she specified another qualifying grave. In years long gone, we camped there, she and I, and watched the sky fracture and fall through one long night, mistaking the Perseids' reflection for climbers' headlamps on the glacier, glittering. Frogs dance there in the thousands, Frogs of my mother's Dreaming, all 'round the edge of a tiny, shallow alpine tarn beneath the Mountain That Was God. I know this place, and love it as my own.

It is there that I will take her, to the Frog Bog. I will spread her ashes in the meadow, cast them on the water and consign her to the spirits in my way. I will dance her into the Dreaming, sing her home to her Ancestors. And I will mourn, not for her passage because it was her time, but that I failed.

Suggested reading: "The Mountain That Was God," John H. Williams, Tacoma WA 1910, by the author and subsequently G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York 1911

Should I or shouldn't I? Considering the alternatives with respect to a short bike ride, my conscience overrode my reluctance to venture out on the Saturday highway, and off I went with a goal of ten miles in mind. Short? Very short, to my way of thinking, and that fact struck home when I looked at the odometer and discovered that I was already 3.7 miles into it and not even warmed up yet. Okay, fifteen, then, and that ought to take me to a landmark I could consider a 'goal.' I'm goal-oriented. I like to hike to a summit or failing that, a particular tree or rock I can engage in conversation.

When I reached the intersection I had in mind, I still didn't feel I'd come halfway. The odometer told me I'd done my duty and then some, but I was unsatisfied. I'd come up a hill I'd expected to be difficult, only to find it rolling back from a bicyclist's perspective, and the terrain beyond it was relatively flat by comparison. Another goal lay a mile ahead, mom-and-pop grocery and a wide spot in the road.

Since I had exceeded the hour at which I had planned to be back at home, I called Bob from the 8.5 mile turn-around point and checked in so that he wouldn't fret, having heard my concerns about heavy weekend traffic. It was mid-day, and tourists rushed both up and down the road, Winnebagos and boat trailers barrelling along at warp speed. The bicyclist's allotment of the pavement is generous along this stretch for the most part, but folk do weave as they're chattering on their phones or fighting with the kids, and the cyclist must also sometimes swerve to avoid broken glass or other roadway hazard (a point only the best drivers consider).

Not too far from the intersection and on the proper side of the road at this juncture, a patch of cattails grows at the bottom of a shallow ditch which the mowing machine fails to reach. The brown spears were just beginning to plump up and, as is my custom, I stopped to pick a bouquet of nine for my fishing buddy's wife, no more and none for myself, because this spot is often over-harvested by commercial plant gatherers with little regard for its continuation. I laid the bike on the newly-cut verge, rummaged up the pocket knife which is always present in many permutations either in purse, pack or pocket, and set to cutting slender stalks and stripping them of leaves. I bundled the stems with my handkerchief, tied it to my bike bag horizontally, cut ends foremost, and resumed my ride.

On the edge of a seedy small town, the highway is crossed by railroad tracks owned and operated by Tacoma Rail for use principally by the timber industry. These tracks have been renovated recently, owing to deterioration of the asphalt at the edges of the rails. The new crossing is concrete, and a lovely thing to look at or to drive over with a car, but it is a serious hazard to a bicycle with narrow tires.

I navigated the first of the paired steel rails, but at the second, my tire caught in the groove and turned to follow the channel. Pitched sideways, I tumbled with the bike into the road, one thought in my mind: I just healed up from Denver! Just that quickly, I was down and trying to assess the damage to my person. A friendly driver pulled ahead, stopped the car and the passenger got out to assist. "Are you okay?" she called to me.

As is my wont, I answered, "Yeah, I'm all right," although I wasn't sure. I was having trouble seeing, and soon discovered that my glasses were askew and the left lens missing; Job One: find my other eye. Through my single window on the world, I spotted the lens in the road and crawled forward a few feet to retrieve it, not giving an iota of thought to oncoming traffic, but there was no hope of reinserting it into the crumpled frame.

My rescuer was concerned for my well-being. I was more interested in whether or not the bike had survived. Of the two, I fared the worse. The kind lady offered me a ride upon discovering that I was a mere two miles from home, but I declined. Better to exercise my abused body to stave off the stiffness which was bound to follow. One-eyed, I made my way home laughing at my clumsiness, wondering how I was going to explain yet another mishap to Bob lest he think me accident-prone in the extreme.

Tally of my injuries: Left knee barked and oozing still, five hours later. Left leg scraped beneath it. Right knee barked lightly, deeper 2-inch laceration on the shin. Left shoulder abraded. Left cheek dinged with the possibility of a small mouse developing (Denver got the right eye, after all). Both hands marked with asphalt pecks and a small piece of hide missing on the pad below my right thumb. Dignity...well, as long as I can laugh, I guess it's still intact.

August has a bad track record. In 2004, I t-boned a small child with my brand-new bike and totalled it on Friday the 13th. On 8 August 2005, the knock-off lever on the front wheel of the same bike clipped a concrete block as I wheeled it through a narrow passage and tore my shoulder to smithereens. Today, I made another August memory on the self-same bike. Bike or month, I don't know which has been jinxed, but I think I'll reserve August for foot travel henceforth.

In the shaman's world, there is no such thing as coincidence. Message hides in every circumstance, and the more uncanny, the deeper the meaning.

I have become used to waking when Bob wakes, 2300 miles across the country, or having my eyelids droop as he falls asleep in his recliner. Nor is it unusual for me to pick up the phone to call him, only to have it ring in my hand. Our PMs and text messages cross in mid-wire, and our dreams...well, the parallels of our dreams have been measured and recorded by the clock. It was not surprising then that when I woke abruptly from a deep nap this afternoon, the phone jangled within minutes of my wits' return, and his sweetly accented greeting fell upon my ear.

I had been having a difficult day, affected strongly by exhaustion. When in this state, I am emotional and even sometimes a bit irrational in my fears. "Boogeymen under the bed," I explain to him, and he understands that I'm spooking at shadows, alarmed by things in my imagination. He soothes me with three simple words, "I love you," the medicine my soul craves. He is my physician, and no finer.

At the end of our conversation, I rise from the couch to replace the phone on its table. As I turn, a bright blue flash glints in the farthest bird feeder. I freeze, phone still in hand. Blue-colored birds are not common to my area. I am looking at a lazuli bunting, logged only once to my Life List, and that, last year. My conscious thought ticks off another coup, even as my subconscious self recognizes another meaning. My mouth speaks, bypassing the link with the controller in my brain. "My rainbow bird!" I blurt, acknowledging the spirit of my man.

My words ending, the tiny blur of colors, white, red and blue, flits from the feeder and disappears into Clyde's evergreens. My prescription has been filled.

Halfway through a sentence, the words in my mouth are sharply jolted and lodge behind my teeth. The timbers of my house creak like trees in a frost-spangled wind. Three seconds, and breath returns to my lungs, substance of my dialog lost in the bedsheets, so I stutter and blurt, "I just had an earthquake!" into Bob's ear through the telephone lines while I still have a modicum of self-possession. It was over with, but it takes the adrenaline a minute to catch up.

The event replays in my mind. Could it have been the cat on her morning romp, crashing into the back of the couch and impelling it against the window ledge at the end of a 20-foot run to her window seat? Possibly. A 13-pound cat at launch velocity makes quite a boom and crash. Reconsidering, I review the harmonics of the brief rattling, eidetic memory giving my body a full record of the pitch and shake. No, not the cat.

I keep Bob talking for a few minutes, long enough for USGS to post data to their site, and then I suggest paying their web page a visit. He reads me the newly-posted data: 3:27 AM, 2.7 Richter, so many miles north-northeast from here, so many miles south of there, familiar triangulation. He does a map search, comes up with an epicenter at Golden Lakes which is no surprise to me. An active area, not far from another in the Busywild country. I love that name, Busywild Creek.

The crisis past, another rears its ugly head; bad cess among our forum friends. It has been seething for days, and now is at the flash point. My innate reluctance to become involved is suddenly thrust to the back of my mind. A gush of words, dislodged from the earthquake's constriction in my throat, spill forth in text. I am not aware of what I have written, only of the structure and syntax necessary to the proper flow of nouns and verbs.

My cell phone rings once, the get-off-the-computer-I'm-trying-to-call-you phone. I disconnect. Behind the idle display, replies to my verbal flux are sprouting like chanterelles after autumn rain. Bob reads them to me. I cannot connect them to any utterance of mine. A storm is dispelling, its waters oiled by something yet unrecognized.

Mid-afternoon, I am looking out the window toward Golden Lakes and the Mountain. Insight. Epiphany. The earthquake timely, the block of words, the gush from the broken dam, the power of the Mountain directing me, His spirit speaking the healing through my fingers. The tool is credited for the Wielder's mastery, and I have done no more than my design.

His faith moves me. Tonight he has carried my Ancestors into his Bible study and used them to open eyes to the wonder of his God. I am stunned at the marriage of our beliefs, walking but one path side by side. In this gift, he has blindsided me again. "When you least expect it, expect it," he warns.

A smoke of cedar incense rises from the burner, the Oriental origins of which are lost in the antiquity of my childhood, purifying me in its wreath and curl in the way of Northwest native peoples. My invocation faces East, South, West and North to bless this man: strength, stability, harmony and the current of life; for he has given them to me in tripled measure. As I face the compass rose of peaks in the eye of memory, he follows me in image, his features photographed in the curve of a ridge, the thatch of white pine cascading over the brow of a hill, the smile of the creek's bend. My spirits portray him in the panorama of this elysium, only now recognized as destiny. These are the hills and valleys he takes with him to Bible study, and I am there with God, walking the one path in my shaman's garment beside him, painted with the Rainbow of his heart.

My chilled hands sought keys stiffly, composing a note to a friend on the opposite side of the country as she grew more and more frustrated with the faulty air conditioning at her place of employment, but it was hard to be adequately sympathetic to her misery at 100° while I was seriously considering ramping the furnace up a notch. My indoor thermometer registered only a few degrees above sixty; the outside sensor hovered near forty when I arose.

Over the past weeks, it has been a source of some wry amusement to see my sweetheart's daily lows holding ground above the Pacific Northwest's highs, although while I was visiting him, Washington's famous cool cloudiness took a small vacation as well and seemed to have entered a race with the Georgia weather. Left or right coast, our peaks and valleys paralleled during my absence, although I can say from experience that the humidity I found in Peachtree City was of a somewhat less cloying kind than that which sweeps up from Puget Sound, and never mind the joys of air conditioning everywhere. Northwesterners do not bother with such appliances, only cursing through the few days each year when a swamp cooler might make life more bearable, and then only in the sultry evening.

My walks in Georgia were pleasant, and if I arrived at my temporary home a few hours later drenched in sweat, it was to enter a cool room and to find the luxury of a second shower. Admittedly, most of my forays were made in the relative lows of morning, but even so, a shorter afternoon stroll was not the drag and plod through syrup that one finds along the flanks of the Cascades. I enjoyed the sun on my shoulders, and instead of racing through the bright spots and into the shelter of a shadow, I exposed my back to ultraviolet rays in carefully moderated dosages and gathered a bit of tan while rambling along the sidewalks of the Atlanta suburb, or sat out at the entrance to the nature area with my journal in my lap.

I paid little attention to my home state's forecast, only hearing from my fishing buddy that the temperatures had been above the norm. When I arrived home and checked my instruments, I found a high of 99° recorded, and the cat melted into a pool on the living room floor. For a few days, the readings remained high. On the opposite coast, in New York and Georgia, the mercury was climbing even as that in the PNW subsequently dropped. With a heat index of 106° at the Vidalia Municipal Airport, my device stood at half that (53°) as I read the side-by-side reports.

Washington's customary summer contains but one major peak which may occur at any time from June through August. It seldom lasts more than five days or a week. I would like to think that I had escaped it in the pleasant warmth of Georgia, and even as the temperatures rise higher each day now nearer the Atlantic, I step over and give the golden dial a nudge, igniting a small pool of petroleum and bringing my house up to a tolerable 68°.